Materials research at Rice encompasses many areas including biomaterials, coatings and thin films, optical materials, energy storage and conversion, carbon nanomaterials and composites and the list goes on. The Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of knowledge in materials and producing the materials scientists and engineers of the future.

Excellence â€” in education and research â€” is the guiding principle for the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. We strive to provide a welcoming environment where diversity is valued and every student, faculty and staff member is supported in their academic and professional goals. Creativity and ethical practices motivate our efforts as we work to discover and create the new and the groundbreaking in materials science and nano engineering.

Academics

Resources

Materials science is a broad field involving engineers and scientists from many disciplines: chemical engineering, chemistry, civil engineering, bioengineering, physics, computer engineering, and more. New materials are in demand for medicine, manufacturing, space exploration, defense and many more areas, rendering it one of the most in-demand majors today.

Materials research at Rice encompasses many areas including biomaterials, coatings and thin films, optical materials, energy storage and conversion, carbon nanomaterials and composites and the list goes on. The Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering is dedicated to expanding the boundaries of knowledge in materials and producing the materials scientists and engineers of the future.

Excellence â€” in education and research â€” is the guiding principle for the Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. We strive to provide a welcoming environment where diversity is valued and every student, faculty and staff member is supported in their academic and professional goals. Creativity and ethical practices motivate our efforts as we work to discover and create the new and the groundbreaking in materials science and nano engineering.

Academics

Resources

Materials science is a broad field involving engineers and scientists from many disciplines: chemical engineering, chemistry, civil engineering, bioengineering, physics, computer engineering, and more. New materials are in demand for medicine, manufacturing, space exploration, defense and many more areas, rendering it one of the most in-demand majors today.

Freeze-dried foam soaks up CO2

Rice University materials scientists have created a light foam from two-dimensional sheets of hexagonal-boron nitride (h-BN) that absorbs carbon dioxide.

Â

They discovered freeze-drying h-BN turned it into a macro-scale foam that disintegrates in liquids. But adding a bit of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) into the mix transformed it into a far more robust and useful material.

Â

The foam is highly porous and its properties can be tuned for use in air filters and as gas absorption materials, according to researchers in the Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan.

Â

Their work appears in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano.

Â

The polyvinyl alcohol serves as a glue. Mixed into a solution with flakes of h-BN, it binds the junctions as the microscopic sheets arrange themselves into a lattice when freeze-dried. The one-step process is scalable, the researchers said.

Â

â€śEven a very small amount of PVA works,â€ť said co-author and Rice postdoctoral researcher Chandra Sekhar Tiwary. â€śIt helps make the foam stiff by gluing the interconnects between the h-BN sheets â€“ and at the same time, it hardly changes the surface area at all.â€ť

Â

In molecular dynamics simulations, the foam adsorbed 340 percent of its own weight in carbon dioxide. The greenhouse gas can be evaporated out of the material, which can be reused repeatedly, Tiwary said. Compression tests showed the foam got stiffer through 2,000 cycles as well.

Â

And when coated with PDMS, another polymer, the foam becomes an effective shield from lasers that could be used in biomedical, electronics and other applications, he said.

Â

Ultimately, the researchers want to gain control over the size of the materialâ€™s pores for specific applications, like separating oil from water. Simulations carried out by co-author Cristiano Woellner, a joint postdoctoral researcher at Rice and the State University of Campinas, Brazil, could serve as a guide for experimentalists.

Â

â€śItâ€™s important to join experiments and theoretical calculations to see the mechanical response of this composite,â€ť Woellner said. â€śThis way, experimentalists will see in advance how they can improve the system.â€ť

Â

Rice graduate student Peter Owuor is lead author of the paper. Co-authors are Ok-Kyung Park, a visiting scholar at Rice and a postdoctoral researcher at Chonbuk National University, Republic of Korea; Rice postdoctoral researchers Almaz Jalilov and Rodrigo Villegas Salvatierra and graduate students Luong Xuan Duy, Sandhya Susarla and Jarin Joyner; Rice alumnus Sehmus Ozden, now a postdoctoral fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory; Robert Vajtai, a senior faculty fellow at Rice; Jun Lou, a Rice professor of materials science and nanoengineering; and James Tour, Riceâ€™s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering; and Professor Douglas GalvĂŁo of the State University of Campinas. Ajayan is chair of Riceâ€™s Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Engineering and a professor of chemistry.

Â

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative funded the research.